


We Need a Hero With Some Sense

by yourlibrarian



Series: Reviews [24]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Nonfiction, Reviews, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26034022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: My feelings about the first two seasons of Umbrella Academy are rather mixed.  On the one hand, many of the episodes are extremely bingeable.  I saw the first season over 3 days, and at first was very curious to see more since the entire series is packed full of mysteries.  But both seasons show a tendency to want to do things for effect rather than because they make any sense, and in some cases the behavior is pretty inexplicable.
Series: Reviews [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/465847
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	We Need a Hero With Some Sense

My feelings about the first two seasons of Umbrella Academy are rather mixed. On the one hand, many of the episodes are extremely bingeable. I saw the first season over 3 days, and at first was very curious to see more since the entire series is packed full of mysteries. But both seasons show a tendency to want to do things for effect rather than because they make any sense, and in some cases the behavior is pretty inexplicable.

Things slowed down for me after the halfway point in S1. Part of it is because I felt a lot of stuff became telegraphed and it's never good when the viewer is way ahead of the characters. For example, it seemed obvious to me early on that Vanya would not, in fact, turn out to be ordinary. Part of this is because it was her birth we started with, part of it is because it seemed to me odd that she was excluded completely from the Umbrella Academy activities. Any superhero team also needs support people (or, as Ned from Spiderman would say, a guy in a chair). It would be logical to train her to do that. And the third reason is because so much was made of it in the episodes when, clearly, their dad was awful to all of them, yet pretty much everyone in the world is ordinary. It didn't seem like it should be such a cross to bear. 

Also, the whole "ordinary" business seemed particularly strange to me in retrospect, because what exactly did Klaus do on these jobs of theirs as they were growing up? He was more afraid of ghosts than anything else, and it isn't until the final 10 minutes of the show that we seem him actually able to contribute in a physical way to the group's defense (or offense). So why wasn't he just as sidelined?

Secondly, it seemed highly likely that something involving Vanya would kick off the apocalypse, although if not my suspicion was that Five's efforts to prevent it would be the cause. So that proved true as well. Similarly, I was suspicious of Leonard from the get go, and had a feeling that Patch was going to wind up dead. 

I felt this last because I wasn't pleased with the women's roles in this story which was rife with men. It seemed odd to me that there would be only one woman with powers (assuming I was wrong about Vanya) compared to five men. They had no mother but rather a mechanical nanny, and a male chimp in the household. There were more in secondary roles –- Cha Cha, Agnes, The Handler -– but even there we end up with two of them dead. What's more, although in many ways Allison was the most powerful of them, her entire time in the series was spent on her being afraid and ashamed of her power and sidelined by her relationship to Vanya. Why was this relationship more important to her than to the others -- just because they were women? Or simply -- which is my choice -- because the plot required it so that Allison could then lose her power and feel overcome by guilt, effectively standing in the way of stopping Vanya. Because at first, Allison is just as resentful of Vanya's tell-all book as the others, and then she alone seems to suddenly care about Vanya's exclusion and well being.

Just because Allison didn't actually die (certainly no thanks to her siblings) she did lose her power just as Vanya gained hers. It was like there could only be one powerful woman in the group and she would always be a threat. Or perhaps it would be too obvious that her issues and Vanya's were the same, even if their powers were very different. Given that the only other person with issues about their powers was Klaus (a gay man, and thus also set apart from his brothers) and he was also afraid of his power (though for a more personal reason), I really didn't care for the meta-narrative being spun about how a minority can't handle power. We can't say anything about Ben, given that we still don't know as much about him or how he died. But he didn't seem very thrilled with his power, which involved being a host to an extradimensional creature (even after death? How does that even work?)

Speaking of meta-narratives though, I don't know that anyone came out looking all that good. Luther was given the leadership role for no clear reason, other perhaps than that he was the [strong, straight, white male](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Many-Incompetent-Become-Leaders/dp/1633696324/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8). He certainly doesn't seem to have learned anything about leadership from those years. Instead, his devotion to the authority that put him in that role ends up being his undoing, and he has to be sent away. Diego's need for revenge and to stick it to his father is simply the flip side of Luther's masculinity. We only know that Five defied his father's limitations on him, which turned out badly for him but (in theory) good for the rest of the world. Overall this paints a picture of relation to one's father as hopeless -- whether you follow him devotedly, hate his guts, or rebel against him to your own regret, you're no better off. 

Of all of them, Five was the one both most comfortable with his abilities and with the fewest issues about his childhood or family (logical, given his age). He was driven and determined but with some perspective about the whole thing. His main problem was that he didn't work well with others, but then this was hardly surprising given the life he'd led, as well as his broader understanding of what was at stake and who was involved. The rest of the "team" was flying blind through much of it which grew increasingly frustrating.

The overall storyline could have been half the length if people just talked to one another. And as such, it seemed to me deliberate that no one has cell phones, the Internet, etc. When Vanya yells at Allison, asking her who investigates a potential date, I actually snorted because in this day and age _what woman doesn't_?

The bizarre issue of technology and time period is well addressed [in this article](https://heavy.com/entertainment/2019/02/the-umbrella-academy-timeline-what-year/). While "parallel universe" is all very well, it still doesn't explain the complete dichotomy of tech development which seems created for the sole purpose of writing convenience. I understand the comics series was set in the 1970s which would explain a lot. But given that it was written in 2007, that was also a deliberate choice. While the series insists it's set in 2019, nothing about the look or function of the series suggests anything other than the 1970s. 

Some stuff seems deliberately grafted onto this framework, in fact, such as Agnes daydreaming about opening a vegan donut shop. This was just another example of a plot point that made no sense. I had assumed throughout the season that Agnes was merely an employee at the shop (one which was miraculously repaired within a day from its destruction and bloodstains). But when she leaves it's made clear that she's the shop _owner_. So if she wants to open a shop elsewhere, why doesn't she simply _sell the shop she already owns_ in order to fund a shop in the country? Clearly it's doing well, there would be buyers!

So much of the plot is needlessly frustrating. Its strength is that it keeps revealing stories slowly so that we come to understand what happened to Five, what happened to (most of) the kids, something about The Handler's organization, and even at the very end, a suggestion of how Reginald came to set up the Academy. But as disconnected as these people have all become from one another, I couldn't figure out if they were so deliberately uncommunicative because they had only ever learned to relate through a martial authoritarian figure, or if it was done out of personal resentment. One would have thought that a team, however long disbanded, would have fallen into a pattern of working together sooner. It's much like how any family or group of friends, once reunited, tends to fall into familiar roles by default.

But then this leads to my biggest issue with the season which is Vanya's completely unbelievable arc. I buy the idea that she herself was brainwashed into thinking she had no powers, and that this fiction was maintained by the suppression pills. But how could the rest of the team continue this fiction? Sure they were "4 years old" when she was deemed too dangerous to continue training. But how did they explain the terrible injuries (or even deaths) of their repeated nannies? And why did Vanya have a nanny to herself in the first place? Surely she exhibited powers at other times that they would have witnessed.

Speaking of which, why wasn't Allison equally dangerous? How could a 4 year old have been so powerful and yet so self controlled at that age? (I have to wonder how her power could have been discovered in the first place, since it's suggested that the phrasing has to be very specific for her to control another person.) One would have assumed that she could have affected everyone around her on a daily basis without any particular ill intent. I don't think any parent can imagine their child restraining themselves that much at 4 years of age if they could have the world as they want it. How could they even understand the consequences? I think this is one reason why in many superhero stories the powers manifest at or after puberty.

This leads me to the second problem, which is how everyone handles Vanya. At one point someone mentions how terribly empathetic she was that she didn't want ants harmed. Yet we got no suggestion she was in the least concerned (or even frightened) by what happened to her nannies. Rather, she seemed alarmed when Grace was unable to be seriously damaged by her actions, leading her to not just reluctantly eat her oatmeal but finish the whole thing. This does not jibe well with a particularly empathetic personality!

Then there's also the evidence of Vanya's book. Given her father's wealth surely she didn't need the money. She had every right to talk about her own experience but it was suggested that she wasn't discreet about anyone else's life, enough so that -- even though in the end this group is willing to risk the world rather than end her life -- they all cut her out of theirs for over a decade. 

And that leads me to the equally unbelievable actions by Reginald and Pogo. Reginald is a complete control freak with his children and staff. Pogo knew everything that had happened with everyone. Grace could be programmed. It's not crazy that Reginald might have thought his death could reunite the group (though I would have thought he would fake his death instead). But to then leave everything else _to chance?_ No way -- especially since he surely would have doubted Luther's leadership capabilities by that point, and couldn't have predicted Five's return. Moreover, he should have suspected just how dangerous Vanya could be as she matured. 

How could Reginald not have left explicit instructions with Pogo on what to do about her? Why not also marshal Grace into organizing his team, since surely Diego wasn't the only one with sentimental feelings for her? How could Pogo, seeing how badly everything was going, not simply level with everyone about Vanya and other expected threats, particularly once Five returned?

Lastly, while I think it was a huge blind spot that Five thought the apocalypse was averted just because Leonard/Harold was dead, by the time Vanya turned up again they all knew. She could well have killed Allison but _then left her while she could still be saved_ (though don't get me started on a woman bleeding out being taken all the way back to the Academy rather than to the hospital that clearly existed in that community!) I completely expected Luther to break Vanya's neck when he hugged her. But noooooo. Yet earlier we'd seen he didn't care about anyone but Allison. Plus, Luther knew that even his father had found Vanya to be too dangerous to take a chance on letting her control herself. Luther of all people should have acted, given how important both these people were to him.

So yeah, lots of interesting story elements, but so many problems in the overall execution. And then I barreled through S2 of The Umbrella Academy and enjoyed it more than S1. 

Part of the issue with both seasons is that if you've got a superhero team what you want is to see them in action together. Yet S1 was all about keeping them apart, both because the episodes had numerous flashbacks telling stories in pieces, as well as because we needed to get to know each character. Plus, as I mentioned, there was so much deliberate lack of communication that it was irritating because it was completely unrealistic.

So S2 begins in a dramatic fashion, both by setting up their (again) separation, and then the awesome team fight scene. Yet the writing problems exist right at the beginning. The fight scene makes zero sense. No one is using ground troops during a nuclear war. And how would the Russians send them to the outskirts of Dallas? It's not like driving across a country border!

So the writers continue to rely on effect rather than rationality when it comes to their plotting, not straying far from the comics. But overall S2 is much more cohesive. Dropping them all in different years doesn't make much sense but it is rather genius in terms of giving each character their own storyline, since it allows them to reveal themselves as people in a way that S1 did not. Each of them gets to reinvent themselves as who they might have been had they not been raised the way they were.

It's very interesting to see who those people might have been. Vanya is still hiding from herself but longing for connection. Luther is a stereotypical strongman who still follows someone else's orders but doesn't have to lead. We must also assume he has been just as alone as he was on the moon, since the only person we see him interact with is his boss.

Allison could have become a leader in a very different way, able to effect real and badly needed change if she only strategized. But the planning is left to others and she remains afraid of herself -- unsurprisingly given the one example we see of it, which is used for revenge and not improvement. Diego, who is sure of himself and lacks restraint, is quite literally restrained by people who don't believe in him. Except for Lila -- and her story ends up being a nice little reveal, one of the best parts of the season.

Klaus is both adored and out. Once sober his potential power reveals itself, but it is largely a self-indulgent one. The surprise about how Ben came to be attached to him is rather horrifying in its casual selfishness, but this act gets handwaved away not long after when Ben absolves him. Ben himself still doesn't get developed, being Klaus' eternal sidekick in this season as well. But he makes a heroic sacrifice in an unexpected way that was also a great twist. One presumes we'll get more of Ben at last next season.

Once again it is Five who keeps the plot in motion. Besides having more of a clue as to what is going on, he has the ability to pull all the siblings back in contact with one another. He is also the link to the repeated machinations of the Commission, at least until Lila is revealed.

He also remained the character I most empathized with since he alone seemed capable of making and sticking to sensible plans while his self-sabotaging siblings continued to infuriate with their inability to face the reality of their situations. But it's funny how the two kids who "left" the family early seem to be the only competent adults of the bunch. Five's conversation with Reginald made me reflect that Five is really the only one of them who got to develop such skills. His early removal from the family dynamic made his already rebellious and risk taking personality settle into one of early maturity, where he had to fend for himself and learn to take responsibility for his own actions instead of having that put upon him by an outside force. His siblings meanwhile were dictated to daily in every way. It's not unlike the whole conflict these days of helicopter parenting vs early independence and how it impacts a kid's decision making skills and sense of anxiety about even small things.

So it isn't just that Five is far older than any of them with a lifetime of experiences none of them have shared. He also had to learn to function within a competitive and backstabbing organization full of office politics, high stakes, and complicated situations. (One would also assume, given his arguments with himself about math and the headache inducing complications of timelines, that he is among the brightest of the bunch. Diego and Luther are canonically not very sharp). Despite his apparent age, Reginald instantly singles him out as the one in charge if not the most capable one. And the advice he gives him is sound, as it turns out. Five first got himself into trouble by going big instead of going small. In a non-parental role, his father's advice is something he's more willing to listen to.

Yet the largely unseen Ben either learned from the painful experience of watching Klaus or was simply a more responsible person to begin with. Ben also escaped his father's thumb earlier in life. The fact that he is now alive and heading up his father's new team suggests to me that Five is going to have serious competition in outhinking and outplanning the siblings' opponents. That should be something to see!

While the Kennedy assassination is, to me, a rather tired focal point for time travel stories, it was interesting to discover how that spun out into a new apocalypse. I figured it was because he lived rather than died and maybe even why but not how. The side story with Harlan is something that didn't go the way I expected, in various ways. For one, I'd have assumed that it was Vanya's newly revealed life giving ability that might have restored the rest of the team rather than Five once more saving the day. But maybe that is also something that will pay off in S3.

Overall the greater linearity of the season and the less tortured reasons for separating the characters helped keep things moving forward. While I briefly thought that we would see them stay in the 60s, the ending coda left something of a clean slate to continue on with -- not to mention the reveal about Reginald. Perhaps S3 will finally give us the characters working as a superhero team -- not like the one Reginald raised them to be, but like the one they themselves learn to become.


End file.
